Posts tagged with UNEMPLOYMENT

“I’m meeting my boss later,” my patient said. “I’m worried she’s going to tell me I’m not pulling my weight, and that I should volunteer to work more hours to show my commitment.”

This tension had been building at her job for months, and she feared that there would be a tacit threat in this meeting: work longer hours, uncompensated, or we will push you out. She was already finding it hard to spend so much time away from home. But she couldn’t afford to risk unemployment.

“What am I supposed to tell my children?” she asked, breaking down.

My stomach knotted. Such worries among my patients are becoming so common, so persistent, that I find myself focusing less and less on problems and neuroses that are specific to individual patients, and more and more on what is happening to the fabric of daily life. Read more…

Perhaps we underestimate ourselves. Five years after the Lehman collapse triggered the deepest recession in eight decades, the middle class may be solving the vexing problems of income inequality and stalled wages on its own.

Faced with unemployment and dim job prospects, Americans made one significant change that should alter their fortunes and those of the middle class for decades: they went back to school. During the recession, there has been a sharp surge in the number of Americans who are getting a college degree.

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Credit Javier Jaén

For much of the last several decades young Americans, particularly young men, had shied away from college. As a share of the population, there were actually more male college degree holders among those ages 25 to 29 in 1976 than there were in 2006. Between 2000 and 2006, the share of all Americans ages 25 to 29 with a four-year college degree dipped by 0.7 percentage points, with men leading the decline, falling from 27.9 percent to 25.3 percent.

Americans have now reversed that decline by going to school in unprecedented numbers. In 2011, there were 3.2 million more people enrolled in higher education than there were in 2006. This 18 percent increase in enrollment was the largest such jump since the end of the Vietnam War. Read more…

I had the good fortune to be in the crowd in Washington when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his thrilling “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963. I was 20 years old, and had just finished college. It was just a couple of weeks before I began my graduate studies in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The night before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I had stayed at the home of a college classmate whose father, Arthur J. Goldberg, was an associate justice of the Supreme Court and was committed to bringing about economic justice. Who would have imagined, 50 years later, that this very body, which had once seemed determined to usher in a more fair and inclusive America, would become the instrument for preserving inequalities: allowing nearly unlimited corporate spending to influence political campaigns, pretending that the legacy of voting discrimination no longer exists, and restricting the rights of workers and other plaintiffs to sue employers and companies for misconduct?

Listening to Dr. King speak evoked many emotions for me. Young and sheltered though I was, I was part of a generation that saw the inequities that had been inherited from the past, and was committed to correcting these wrongs. Born during World War II, I came of age as quiet but unmistakable changes were washing over American society.Read more…

With each month of steady employment growth — in May, 175,000 jobs were created — the feeling of lassitude around the issues facing the American economy takes hold a little bit more.

Amid the gathering drumbeat of pronouncements of economic optimism, most dramatically from the Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday, the feeling of dread that used to bubble up in the moments before each month’s jobs report has largely dissipated.

That’s good news, certainly. But still, the thing that has replaced our collective dread may be even more dangerous in the long run — and that’s complacency. The slowness of our economic recovery should remain our biggest national worry, particularly as that sluggishness is manifested in inadequate job totals and stagnant incomes.Read more…

It’s easy to believe the worst is over in the economic downturn. But for African-Americans, the pain continues — over 13 percent of black workers are unemployed, nearly twice the national average. And that’s not a new development: regardless of the economy, job prospects for African-Americans have long been significantly worse than for the country as a whole.

The most obvious explanation for this entrenched disparity is racial discrimination. But in my research I have found a somewhat different culprit: favoritism. Getting an inside edge by using help from family and friends is a powerful, hidden force driving inequality in the United States.

Such favoritism has a strong racial component. Through such seemingly innocuous networking, white Americans tend to help other whites, because social resources are concentrated among whites. If African-Americans are not part of the same networks, they will have a harder time finding decent jobs.

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Jobseekers stand in line to attend the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Career Fair in New York on April 12, 2012.Credit Lucas Jackson/Reuters

During the weekly exchange of peace handshakes several months ago at the small church around the corner from where I live in Chicago, a fellow congregant met my extended hand with a firm grip and said, “I heard that you lost your job — you must be scared.” Then she followed up with a “Peace be with you” and moved on to another parishioner.

It was true. When the large bank I had worked for underwent “restructuring” a few months before, I quickly became one of nearly 12 million unemployed people in the United States. That’s about the same number of people who watched the zombie drama “The Walking Dead” this season, and more than the entire population of Ohio.

I should have insisted during that Sunday morning handshake that, despite being the mother of two young children, and newly remarried after three years of single motherhood, I was not at all scared. But I was instead rendered entirely mute. That exchange of peace was the equivalent of a sneeze carrying a contagion. It was the anti-peace. Read more…

Townies is a series about life in New York, and occasionally other cities.

“This is where the movie ‘Working Girl’ was shot,” the coordinator says. “You know, the conference room with the view where that big scene happens, and Melanie Griffith comes out on top.” She’s stout in a lumpy jacket, and gives off a draft of suppressed ambition, a knowledge of something triumphant that’s finagling to surface.

She’s also right. It’s the first day of summer, and the 21st-floor view of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty and the heaving ferries in New York harbor is a master-of-the-universe kind of panorama. But the office itself, instead of being alive with strivers, is deserted — barren cubicles like empty ice trays, phone jacks forsaken in the grimed walls, overhead fluorescents dark, no paper trail in the trash bins. Read more…

Last week’s Anxiety post, “Control,” featured an interview with Dominick Brocato, conducted and transcribed by DW Gibson, the author of the forthcoming book and documentary film, “Not Working.” Many readers who commented wanted to know how Mr. Brocato was managing his various challenges — unemployment, illness and a lack of medical insurance among them — since the interview, which took place in July 2011. To provide that update to readers, Mr. Gibson contacted Mr. Brocato by e-mail and phone earlier this week.

DW Gibson writes: “When I contacted Dominick, I learned that he’d had surgery on his right knee (unrelated to his cancer) just the day before. I immediately suggested we talk later but he ignored the offer. True to my memory of him, he was at attention, instantly composed and engaged. His own words — “I am still a vital and vibrant person” — still echo in my head. The update below is composed of Dominick’s words from our e-mail correspondence this week and a follow-up conversation over the phone. ”

— The Editors

Dominick Brocato

In 2011, after I found out that the cancer I had in my left leg had moved to my left lung, I had a malignant tumor removed with a partial lung resection. In the weeks to follow, my 23-year-old son had an apparent stroke and was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It was at this point when I really wanted to give up. I kept asking myself why I am being punished. I still cry even thinking about my son’s new challenges. With adversity you can only hope that something good will come to ease your pain. My first grandson was born last summer, and after holding him, my spirit was renewed. Although they live in California, I’ll do everything in my power it to see him grow up.Read more…

In the summer of 2011 the writer DW Gibson set out across the country to speak with Americans who had lost their jobs. The following account is adapted from Mr. Gibson’s July 12, 2011, interview with Dominick Brocato of Kansas City, who had been fired nearly two years before from his position with DST Systems, where he had worked successfully for 20 years. The full interview, and more than 70 others, are collected in the forthcoming book and documentary film “Not Working.”

Mr. Gibson describes Mr. Brocato: “He is 58 and has lived in Kansas City all his life. His shirt is pressed and tucked. His hair is definitely not gray, nor do I think Dominick would allow it to become so. He carries a notepad encased in a leather pouch. His appearance is immaculate and I can confirm it is not easy to remain so well turned out in the July humidity that grips this city, wringing composure from those who are exposed to it.”

— The Editors

Dominick Brocato

Both my grandparents came from Italy. Palermo. My dad was a mechanic. It was very much a Ward and June Cleaver kind of environment. My mom stayed home all day and cooked, and she came home and wore the aprons. My mom died when I was 15 and it was devastating for me. My dad had no idea what to do. I immediately took charge of the family and started doing all the things that needed to be done to keep the family together. My mom kind of trained me and taught me some of those kinds of things. And I think that just kind of carried on. I always wanted to be a protector, and I think that’s why I was always successful in the roles that I was in, because people trusted me.

I’ve been in human resources for many years, and one of the things about human resources is that you’re always there for other people, and you’re always trying to help their lives and help them to see things in a different manner, and I guess I’ve always been good from that standpoint. I didn’t want people to be scared. I wanted to create an environment where you look forward to going into work, and you don’t feel pressured and you don’t feel scared or intimidated — that, to me, is my responsibility.Read more…

LAS VEGAS — Before you write off Vegas, which looks like the American Dream in a pawn shop at 3 a.m., the irrepressible Oscar B. Goodman wants to make a case.

“We’re opening up the new Mob museum later this month, and that’s special, you know, because our heritage came from the Mob,” says Goodman, who was three-term mayor of this town, until his wife, Carolyn, took over last year. Before that he was a Mob lawyer, who, upon entering politics, said it was unwise to call him after 5 p.m., because there was a good chance he’d be drunk.

Dare to dis Vegas, with its yellowed, tattered edges showing everywhere, its billboards for “discount bankruptcy” more ubiquitous than Wayne Newton signs, the urban face for a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and percentage of homes in foreclosure, and you get a Goodman mouthful.

“Listen, I believe I could pass a polygraph test on this, but we have the best chefs in the world, and our sports bars are…” — you get the picture.Read more…